Benoy K. Behl's documentary, Ramayana: The Greatest Epic, takes one to India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal and Indonesia to document and tell the story of this great epic through multi-religious, international cultural performances. Generations of children have learned the vast story of the “Ramayana” through the incredibly diverse methods of performance and storytelling. Join the conversation with the director and curator of the exhibition, Forrest McGill.

Join the Society for Asian Art as we explore the art of India and the Islamic world. As in past seasons, the Fall 2011 lecture series will feature prominent scholars and curators from across the country and showcase many treasures of the Asian Art Museum. An array of topics will be discussed, including the life and visual representation of the Buddha; Hindu gods and goddesses and the depiction of heavenly bodies; sacred architecture; Hindu epics; the diversity of South Asian religious practice and the rise of Islam across Asia; Mughals, maharajas, and manuscript paintings; and contemporary Indian art. This lecture series coincides with the beginning of a three-year training program for new Asian Art Museum docents.

The lectures in this series have been structured to provide a broad overview of both pre-Islamic and Islamic art. The subjects include pre-Islamic art in Iran, Central Asia, Arabia and Byzantium, painting, architecture, ceramics, textiles, calligraphy, Islam in India, attitudes towards images, and contemporary art. A distinguished roster of prominent scholars and curators has been assembled, several of whom will be coming from famous UK institutions such as Oxford and the British Museum.

This lecture series, organized by the Society for Asian Art, explores narrative using Asian art—how myths, legends, histories and moral precepts have been transmitted through visual means. Topics range from sculptural reliefs and murals used to educate pilgrims at famous religious sites to works created primarily for entertainment. Contemporary storytelling is also addressed via lectures on Bollywood and manga produced by San Francisco's Henry Yoshitaka Kiama.

Thom Blum is a Bay Area electroacoustic and acousmatic musician who, after visiting the exhibition, Picturing Sound: Creating Mood at the Asian Art Museum (March 23–November 22, 2015), was inspired to create a response to this painting of a seated yogini.

“How can one portray a still image, frozen in time, using an ‘in-time’ medium like music?” Blum asks. “My goal—and challenge—was to create a complement for this painting, one that encourages the viewer to linger just a little longer and perhaps to look deeper; to experience the musician, the water, the birds, and the full moonlit night.”

Utilizing the special exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation as a point of departure, this short, dynamic talk, or Baat Cheet, focuses on California's unique role in the adoption, evolution, and popularization of yoga today. Ann Dyer turned her creative energies to the study and sharing of yoga and music almost twenty years ago, after spending years as a celebrated jazz vocalist. Last year she formed the Vak Project, a creative initiative of presentation and performance, committed to awakening the public's experience of sound and voice. Her most recent venture was a yearlong project commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which gave birth to her seventy-member Vak Choir of "everyday" voices and culminated in the performance of a theatrical work, Vak: Song of Becoming. Ann's recent TED talk, Why Sing? Why Now?, illustrates the connections between sounds in ancient Indian texts and contemporary life. Ann is director of Mountain Yoga in Oakland.

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Major support for the Asian Art Museum’s education programs and resources is provided by The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Koret Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, and The Hearst Foundations, Inc.